Chapter LXXIV: Conclusion (5)

What the scientists offer as proof is seldom any proof at all. If an hypothesis they invent explains the known facts of a case, they assert it as proved, and therefore true. What fun would they not make of theologians and philosophers, if they reasoned as loosely as they do themselves? Before we can conclude an hypothesis is true because it explains the known facts in the case, we must prove, 1st, that there are and can be no facts in the case not known; and, 2d, that there is no other possible hypothesis on which they can be explained. We do not say the theories of the scientists with regard to the antiquity of the globe and of man on its surface, nor that any of the geological and astronomical hypotheses they set forth are absolutely false; we only say that their alleged facts and reasonings do not prove them. The few facts known might be placed in a very different light by the possibly unknown facts; and there are conceivable any number of other hypotheses which would equally well explain the facts that are known.

The book before us on _Hereditary Genius_ admirably illustrates the insufficiency of the method and the defective logic of the scientists. Mr. Galton, its author, belongs to the school of which such men as Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and Professor Huxley are British chiefs, men who disdain to recognize a self-existent Creator, and who see no difficulty in supposing the universe self-evolved from nothing, or in tracing intelligence, will, generous affection, and heroic effort to the mechanical, chemical, and electrical arrangement and combination of the particles of brute matter. Mr. Galton has written his book, he says, p. 1, to show

"that a man's natural abilities are derived from inheritance,
under exactly the same limitations as are the form and the
physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as
it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by
careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses, gifted
with peculiar powers of running, or of doing any thing else,
so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted
race [breed] of men by judicious marriages during several
consecutive generations."

Mr. Galton, with an air of the most perfect innocence in the world, places man in the category of plants and animals, and in principle simply reproduces for our instruction the _Man-Plant_, from which there is but a step to the _Man-Machine_ of the cynical Lamettrie, the atheistical professor of mathematics in the university of Berlin, and friend of Frederick the Great. The attempt to prove it is a subtle attempt to prove, in the name of science, that the soul, if soul there be, is generated as well as the body, and that a man's natural abilities are derived through generation from his organization. The author from first to last gives no hint that his doctrine is at war with Christian theology, with the freedom of the human will, or man's moral responsibility for his conduct, or that it excludes all morality, all virtue, and all sin, and recognizes only physical good or evil. He would no doubt reply to this that science is science, facts are facts, and he is under no obligation to consider what theological doctrines they do or do not contradict; for nothing can be true that contradicts science or is opposed to facts. That is opposed to actual facts, or that contradicts real science, conceded; for one truth can never contradict another. But the author is bound to consider whether a theory or hypothesis which contradicts the deepest and most cherished beliefs of mankind in all ages and nations, and in which is the key to universal history, is really science, or really is sustained by facts. The presumption, as say the lawyers, is against it, and for its acceptance it requires the clearest and the most irrefragable proofs, and we are not sure that even any proofs would be enough to overcome the presumptions against it, founded as they are on reasons as strong and as conclusive as it is in any case possible for the human mind to have. The assertion that man's natural abilities originate in his organization, and therefore that we may obtain a peculiar breed of men, as we can obtain a peculiar breed of dogs or horses, is revolting to the deepest convictions and the holiest and most irrepressible instincts of every man, except a scientist, and certainly can be reasonably received only on evidence that excludes the possibility of a rational doubt.

Mr. Galton proves, or attempts to prove, his theory by what he no doubt calls an appeal to facts. He takes from a biographical dictionary the names of a few hundreds of men, chiefly Englishmen, during the last two centuries, who have been distinguished as statesmen, lawyers, judges, divines, authors, etc., and finds that in a great majority of cases, as far as is known, they have sprung from families of more than average ability, and, in some cases, from families which have had some one or more members distinguished for several consecutive generations. This is really all the proof Mr. Galton brings to prove his thesis; and if he has not adduced more, it is fair to conclude that it is because no more was to be had.

But the evidence is far from being conclusive. Even if it be true that the majority of eminent men spring from families more or less distinguished, it does not necessarily follow that they derive their eminent abilities by inheritance; for in those same families, born of the same parents, we find other members whose abilities are in no way remarkable, and in no sense above the common level. In a family of half a dozen or a dozen members one will be distinguished and rise to eminence, while the others will remain very ordinary people. Of the Bonaparte family no member approaches in genius the first Napoleon, except the present emperor of the French. Why these marked differences in the children of the same blood, the same breed, the same parents and ancestors? If Mr. Galton explains the inferiority of the five or the eleven by considerations external or independent of race or breed, why may not the superiority of the one be explained by causes alike independent of breed? Why are the natural abilities of my brothers inferior to mine, since we are all born of the same parents? If a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance from organization, why am I superior to them? Every day we meet occasion to ask similar questions. This fact proves that there are causes at work, on which man's eminence or want of eminence depends, of which Mr. Galton's theory takes no note, which escape the greatest scientists, and at best can be only conjectured. But conjecture is not science.

This is not all. As far as known, very eminent men have sprung from parents of very ordinary natural abilities, as of social position. The founders of dynasties and noble families have seldom had distinguished progenitors, and are usually not only the first but the greatest of their line. The present Sir Robert Peel cannot be named alongside of his really eminent father, nor the present Duke of Wellington be compared with his father, the Iron Duke. There is no greater name in history than that of St. Augustine, the eminent father and doctor of the church, a man beside whom in genius and depth, and greatness of mind as well as tenderness of heart, your Platos and Aristotles appear like men of only ordinary stature; yet, though his mother was eminent for her sanctity, his parents do not appear to have been gifted with any extraordinary mental power. Instances are not rare, especially among the saints, of great men who have, so to speak, sprung from nothing. Among the popes we may mention Sixtus Quintus, and Hildebrand, St. Gregory VII.; and among eminent churchmen we may mention St. Thomas of Canterbury, Cardinal Ximenes, and Cardinal Wolsey. The greatest and most gifted of our own statesmen have sprung from undistinguished parents, as Washington, the elder Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Webster, Calhoun. Who dares pretend that every saint has had a saint for a father or mother; that every eminent theologian or philosopher has had any eminent theologian or philosopher for his father; or that every eminent artist, whether in painting, architecture, sculpture, or music, has been the son or grandson of an eminent artist?

Then, again, who can say how much of a great man's greatness is due to his natural abilities with which he was born, and how much is due to the force of example, to family tradition, to education, to his own application, and the concurrence of circumstances? It is in no man's power to tell, nor in any scientist's power to ascertain. It is a common remark that great men in general owe their greatness chiefly to their mothers, and that, in the great majority of cases known, eminent men have had gifted mothers. This, if a fact, is against Mr. Galton's theory; for the father, not the mother, transmits the hereditary character of the offspring, the hereditary qualities of the line, if the physiologists are to be believed. Hence nobility in all civilized nations follows the father, not the mother. The fact of great men owing their greatness more to the mother is explained by her greater influence in forming the mind, in moulding the character, in stimulating and directing the exercise of her son's faculties, than that of the father. It is as educator in the largest sense that the mother forms her son's character and influences his destiny. It is her womanly instincts, affection, and care and vigilance, her ready sympathy, her love, her tenderness, and power to inspire a noble ambition, kindle high and generous aspirations in the breast of her son, that do the work.

Even if it were uniformly true that great men have always descended from parents remarkable for their natural abilities, Mr. Galton's theory that genius is hereditary could not be concluded with scientific certainty. The hereditary transmission of genius might indeed seem probable; but, on the empirical principles of the scientists, it could not be asserted. All that could be asserted would be the relation of concomitance or of juxtaposition, not the relation of cause and effect. The relation of cause and effect is not and cannot, as the scientists tell us, be empirically apprehended. How can they know that the genius of the son is derived hereditarily from the greatness of his progenitors? From the juxtaposition or concomitance of two facts empirically apprehended there is no possible logic by which it can be inferred that the one is the cause of the other. Hence, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, Sir William Hamilton, Professor Huxley, and the positivists follow Hume, and relegate, as we said, causes to the region of the unknowable. In fact, the scientists, if they speak of the relation of cause and effect, mean by it only the relation of juxtaposition in the order of precedence and consequence. Hence, on their own principles, though the facts they assert and describe may be true, none of their conclusions from them, or hypotheses to explain them, have or can have any scientific validity. For, after all, there may be a real cause on which the facts depend, and which demands an entirely different explanation from the one which the scientists offer.

We refuse, therefore, to accept Mr. Galton's hypothesis that genius is hereditary, because the facts he adduces are not all the facts in the case, because there are facts which are not consistent with it, and because he does not show and cannot show that it is the only hypothesis possible for the explanation even of the facts which he alleges. Even his friendly and able reviewer, Dr. Meredith Clymer, concludes his admirable analysis by saying, "A larger induction is necessary before any final decision can be had on the merits of the question." This is the verdict of one of the most scientific minds in the United States, and it is the Scotch verdict, not proven. Yet Mr. Galton would have us accept his theory as science, and on its strength set aside the teachings of revelation and the universal beliefs of mankind. This is the way of all non-Christian scientists of the day, and it is because the church refuses to accept their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses, and condemns them for asserting them as true, that they accuse her of being hostile to modern science. They make certain investigations, ascertain certain facts, imagine certain hypotheses, which are nothing but conjectures, put them forth as science, and then demand that she accept them, and give up her faith so far as incompatible with them. A very reasonable demand indeed!

Press these proud scientists closely, and they will own that _as yet_ their sciences are only tentative, that _as yet_ they are not in a condition to prove absolutely their theories, or to verify their conjectures, but they are in hopes they soon will be. At present, science is only in its infancy, it has only just entered upon the true method of investigation; but it is every day making surprising progress, and there is no telling what marvellous conclusions it will soon arrive at. All this might pass, if it did not concern matters of life and death, heaven and hell. The questions involved are too serious to be sported with, too pressing to wait the slow and uncertain solutions of the tentative science which, during six thousand years, has really made no progress in solving them. The scientists retard science when they ask from it the solution, either affirmative or negative, of questions which confessedly lie not in its province, and dishonor and degrade it when they put forth as science their crude conjectures, or their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses. They, not we, are the real enemies of science, though it would require a miracle to make them see it. Deluded mortals! they start with assumptions that exclude the very possibility of science, and then insist that what they assert or deny shall be accepted by theologians and philosophers as established with scientific certainty! Surely the apostle must have had them in mind when he said of certain men that, "esteeming themselves wise, they became fools."

Genius is not hereditary in Mr. Galton's sense, nor are a man's natural abilities derived by inheritance in the way he would have us believe; for both belong to the soul, not to the body; and the soul is created, not generated. Only the body is generated, and only in what is generated is there natural inheritance. All the facts Mr. Galton adduces we are prepared to admit; but we deny his explanation. We accept, with slight qualifications, his views as summed up by Dr. Clymer in the following passage:

"The doctrine of the pretensions of natural equality in
intellect, which teaches that the sole agencies in creating
differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are
steady application and moral effort, is daily contradicted
by the experiences of the nursery, schools, universities,
and professional careers. There is a definite limit to the
muscular powers of every man, which he cannot by any training
or exertion overpass. It is only the novice gymnast who,
noting his rapid daily gain of strength and skill, believes
in illimitable development; but he learns in time that his
maximum performance becomes a rigidly-determinate quantity.
The same is true of the experience of the student in the
working of his mental powers. The eager boy at the outset of
his career is astonished at his rapid progress; he thinks for
a while that every thing is within his grasp; but he too soon
finds his place among his fellows; he can beat such and such
of his mates, and run on equal terms with others, while there
will be always some whose intellectual and physical feats he
cannot approach. The same experience awaits him when he enters
a larger field of competition in the battle of life; let him
work with all his diligence, he cannot reach his object; let
him have opportunities, he cannot profit by them; he tries
and is tried, and he finally learns his gauge--what he can
do, and what lies beyond his capacity. He has been taught the
hard lesson of his weakness and his strength; he comes to rate
himself as the world rates him; and he salves his wounded
ambition with the conviction that he is doing all his nature
allows him. An evidence of the enormous inequality between
the intellectual capacity of men is shown in the prodigious
differences in the number of marks obtained by those who gain
mathematical honors at the University of Cambridge, England. Of
the four hundred or four hundred and fifty students who take
their degrees each year, about one hundred succeed in gaining
honors in mathematics, and these are ranged in strict order of
merit. Forty of them have the title of 'wrangler,' and to be
even a low wrangler is a creditable thing. The distinction of
being the first in this list of honors, or 'senior wrangler'
of the year, means a great deal more than being the foremost
mathematician of four hundred or four hundred and fifty men
taken at haphazard. Fully one half the wranglers have been boys
of mark at their schools. The senior wrangler of the year is
the chief of these as regards mathematics. The youths start on
their three-years' race fairly, and their run is stimulated by
powerful inducements; at the end they are examined rigorously
for five and a half hours a day for eight days. The marks are
then added up, and the candidates strictly rated in a scale of
merit. The precise number of marks got by the senior wrangler,
in one of the three years given by Mr. Galton, is 7634; by
the second wrangler, 4123; and by the lowest man in the list
of honors, 237. The senior wrangler, consequently, had nearly
twice as many marks as the second, and more than thirty-two
times as many as the lowest man. In the other examinations
given, the results do not materially differ. The senior
wrangler may, therefore, be set down as having thirty-two
times the ability of the lowest men on the lists; or, as Mr.
Galton puts it, 'he would be able to grapple with problems
more than thirty-two times as difficult; or, when dealing with
subjects of the same difficulty, but intelligible to all, would
comprehend them more rapidly in, perhaps, the square-root of
that proportion.' But the mathematical powers of the ultimate
man on the honors-list, which are so low when compared with
those of the foremost man, are above mediocrity when compared
with the gifts of Englishmen generally; for, though the
examination places one hundred honor-men above him, it puts no
less than three hundred 'poll-men' below him. Admitting that
two hundred out of three hundred have refused to work hard
enough to earn honors, there will remain one hundred who, had
they done their possible, never could have got them.

"The same striking intellectual differences between man and man
are found in whatever way ability may be tested, whether in
statesmanship, generalship, literature, science, poetry, art.
The evidence furnished by Mr. Galton's book goes to show in how
small degree eminence in any class of intellectual powers can
be considered as due to purely special faculties. It is the
result of concentrated efforts made by men widely gifted--of
grand human animals; of natures born to achieve greatness."

We are far from pretending that all men are born with equal abilities, and that all souls are created with equal possibilities, or that every child comes into the world a genius in germ. We believe that all men are born with equal natural rights, and that all should be equal before the law, however various and unequal may be their acquired or adventitious rights; but that is all the equality we believe in. No special effort or training in the world, under the influence of the most favorable circumstances, can make every child a St. Augustine, a St. Thomas, a Bossuet, a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Julius Cæsar, a Wellington, a Napoleon. As one star differeth from another in glory, so does one soul differ from another in its capacities on earth as well as in its blessedness in heaven. Here we have no quarrel with Mr. Galton. We are by no means believers in the late Robert Owen's doctrine, that you can make all men equal if you will only surround them from birth with the same circumstances, and enable them to live in parallelograms.

We are prepared to go even farther, and to recognize that the distinction between noble and ignoble, gentle and simple, recognized in all ages and by all nations, is not wholly unfounded. There is as great a variety and as great an inequality in families as in individuals. Aristocracy is not a pure prejudice; and though it has no political privileges in this country, yet it exists here no less than elsewhere, and it is well for us that it does. No greater evil could befall any country than to have no distinguished families rising, generation after generation, above the common level; no born leaders of the people, who stand head and shoulders above the rest; and the great objection to democracy is, that it tends to bring all down to a general average, and to place the administration of public interests in the hands of a low mediocrity, as our American experience, in some measure, proves. The demand of the age for equality of conditions and possessions is most mischievous. If all were equally rich, all would be equally poor; and if all were at the top of society, society would have no bottom, and would be only a bottomless pit. If there were none devoted to learning, no strength and energy of character above the multitude, society would be without leaders, and would soon fall to pieces, as an army of privates without officers.

There is no doubt that there are noble lines, and the descendants of noble ancestors do, as a rule, though not invariably, surpass the descendants of plebeian or undistinguished lines. The Stanleys, for instance, have been distinguished in British history for at least fifteen generations. The present Earl Derby, the fifteenth earl of his house, is hardly inferior to his gifted father, and nobly sustains the honors of his house. We expect more from the child of a good family than from the child of a family of no account, and hold that birth is never to be decried or treated as a matter of no importance. But we count it so chiefly because it secures better breeding, and subjection to higher, nobler, and purer formative influences, from the earliest moment. Example and family traditions are of immense reach in forming the character, and it is not a little to have constantly presented to the consideration of the child the distinguished ability, the eminent worth and noble deeds of a long line of illustrious ancestors, especially in an age and country where blood is highly esteemed, and the honorable pride of family is cultivated. The honor and esteem in which a family has been held for its dignity and worth through several generations is a capital, an outfit for the son, secures him, in starting, the advantage of less well-born competitors, and all the aid in advance of a high position and the good-will of the community. More is exacted of him than of them; he is early made to feel that _noblesse oblige_, and that failure would in his case be dishonor. He is thereby stimulated to greater effort to succeed.

Yet we deny not that there is something else than all this in blood. A man's genius belongs to his soul, and is no more inherited than the soul itself. But man is not all soul, any more than he is all body; body and soul are in close and mysterious relation, and in this life neither acts without the other. The man's natural abilities are psychical, not physical, and are not inherited, because the soul is created, not generated; but their external manifestation may depend, in a measure, on organization, and organization is inherited. Mr. Galton's facts may, then, be admitted without our being obliged to accept his theory. The brain is generally considered by physiologists as the organ of the mind, and it may be so, without implying that the brain secretes thought, will, affection, as the liver secretes bile, or the stomach secretes the gastric juice.

The soul is distinct from the body, and is its _form_, its life, or its vivifying and informing principle; yet it uses the body as the organ of its action. Hence, De Bonald defines man, an intelligence that serves himself by organs, not an intelligence served by organs, as Plato said. The activity is in the soul, not in the organs. The organ we call the eye does not see; the soul sees by means of the eye. So of the ear, the smell, the taste, the touch. We speak of the five senses; but we should speak more correctly if we spoke, not of five senses, but of five organs of sense; for the sense is psychical, and is one like the soul that senses through the organs. In like manner, the brain appears to be the organ of the mind, through which, together with the several nerves that centre in it, the mind performs its various operations of thinking, willing, reasoning, remembering, reflecting, etc. The nature of the relation of the soul, which is one, simple, and immaterial, with a material body with its various organs, nervous and ganglionic systems, is a mystery which we cannot explain. Yet we cannot doubt that there is a reciprocal action and reaction of the soul and body, or, at least, the bodily organs can and do offer, at times, an obstacle to the external action of the soul. I cannot by my will raise my arm, if it be paralyzed, though my psychical power to will to raise it is not thereby affected. If the organs of seeing and hearing, the eye and the ear, are injured or originally defective, my external sight and hearing are thereby injured or rendered defective; but not in other psychical relations, as evinced by the fact that when the physical defect is removed, or the physical injury is cured, the soul finds no difficulty in manifesting its ordinary power of seeing or hearing. So we may say of the other organs of sense, and of the body generally, in so far as it is the organ of the soul, or used by the soul in its external display or manifestation of its powers.

No doubt the organization may be more or less favorable to this external display or manifestation, or that, under certain conditions, and to a certain extent, the organization is hereditary, or transmitted by natural generation. There may be transmitted from parents or ancestors a healthy or diseased, a normal or a more or less abnormal organization; and so far, and in this sense, genius may be hereditary, and a man's natural abilities may be derived by inheritance, as are the form and features; but only to this extent, and in this sense--that is, as to their external display or exercise; for a man may be truly eloquent in his soul, and even in writing, whose stammering tongue prevents him from displaying any eloquence in his speech. The organization does not deprive the soul of its powers. My power to will to raise my arm is not lessened by the fact that my arm is paralyzed. And in all ordinary cases, the soul is able, at least by the help of grace, freely given to all, to overcome a vicious temperament, control, in the moral order, a defective organization, and maintain her moral freedom and integrity. It has been proved that the deaf-mute can be taught to speak, and that idiots or natural-born fools can be so educated as to be able to exhibit no inconsiderable degree of intelligence.

We do not believe a word in Darwin's theory of natural selection; for all the facts on which he bases it admit of a different explanation, nor in its kindred theory of development or evolution of species. One of our own collaborators has amply refuted both theories, by showing that what these theories assume to be the development or evolution of new species, whether by natural selection or otherwise, is but a reversion to the original type and condition, in like manner as we have proved, over and over again, that the savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man. It is not improbable that your African negro is the degenerate descendant of a once over-civilized race, and that he owes his physical peculiarities to the fact that he has become subject, like the animal world, to the laws of nature, which are resisted and modified in their action by the superior races. We do not assert this as scientifically demonstrated, but as a theory which is far better sustained by well-known facts and incontrovertible principles than either the theory of development or of natural selection.

Yet the soul as _forma corporis_ has an influence, we say not how much, on organization; and high intellectual and moral culture may modify it, and, other things being equal, render it in turn more favorable to the external manifestation of the inherent powers of the soul. This more favorable organization may be transmitted by natural generation from parents to children, and, if continued through several consecutive generations, it may give rise to noble families and to races superior to the average. Physical habits are transmissible by inheritance. This is not, as Darwin and Mr. Galton suppose, owing to natural selection, but to the original mental and moral culture become traditional in certain families and races, and to the voluntary efforts of the soul, as is evident from the fact that when the culture is neglected, and the voluntary efforts cease to be made, the superiority is lost, the organization becomes depraved, and the family or race runs out or drops into the ranks of the ignoble. The blood, however blue, will not of itself alone suffice to keep up the superiority of the family or the race; nor will marriages, however judicious, through no matter how many consecutive generations, without the culture, keep up the nobility, as Mr. Galton would have us believe; for the superiority of the blood depends originally and continuously on the soul, its original endowments, and its peculiar training or culture through several generations.

It is in this same way we explain the origin and continuance of national characteristics and differences. Climate and geographical position count, no doubt, for something; but more in the direction they give to the national aims and culture than in their direct effects on bodily organization. It is not probable that the original tribes of Greece had any finer organic adaptation to literature and the arts than had the Scythian hordes from which they sprang; but their climate and geographical position turned their attention to cultivation of the beautiful, and the continual cultivation of the beautiful through several generations gave the Greeks an organization highly favorable to artistic creations. Then, again, Rome cultivated and excelled in the genius of law and jurisprudence. But under Christian faith and culture, the various nations of Europe became assimilated, and the peculiar national characteristics under Gentilism were in a measure obliterated. They also revive as the nations under Protestantism recede from Christianity and return to Gentilism, and are held in check only by the reminiscences of Catholicity, and by the mutual intercourse of nations kept up by trade and commerce, literature and the arts.

The facts alleged by Mr. Galton and his brother materialists are, therefore, explicable without impugning the doctrine of the simplicity and immateriality of the soul, and that the soul is created, not generated as is the body. They are perfectly explicable without supposing our natural abilities originate in or are the result of natural organization. They can be explained in perfect consistency with revelation, with the teachings of the church, and with the universal beliefs of mankind. Thus it would be supreme unreason to require us to reject the Gospel, or our holy religion, on the strength of the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses of the scientists, and degrade man, the lord of this lower creation, to the level of the beasts that perish. The quarrel we began by speaking of is in no sense a quarrel between faith and reason, or revelation and science; but simply a quarrel between what is certain by faith and reason on the one side, and the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses or conjectures of the so-called scientists on the other. We oppose none of the real facts which the scientists set forth; we oppose only their unsupported theories and unwarranted inductions. We conclude by reminding the scientists that others have studied nature as well as they, and are as familiar with its facts and as able to reason on them as they are, and yet have no difficulty in reconciling their science and their faith.

FOOTNOTE:

[285] 1. _Hereditary Genius, its Laws and its Consequences._ By Francis Galton, F.R.S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 390. 2. _Hereditary Genius._ An Analytical Review. From the _Journal of Psychological Medicine_, April, 1870. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 19.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.